User:AldousFLukito

=Analytical Writing=

Statement of Intent


Overview
I intended to write an analyze about two different religions and write about the two different perspective of who God is according to each of their perspective. It is going to be between Christians/Catholics vs Buddhism/ Hinduism

Rationale
I hope that i can get better understanding of each individual perspective in order to place myself when i am speaking with other people, especially about something sensitive like religions ( believes ).

Publication
I would like to show my friends about my research and share with them my point of view from my research. From my article i really wish that people will understand others point of view and respect their believes.

Schedule



 * 1) week 1 Look for research topic
 * 2) week 2 Research and interview
 * 3) week 3 research
 * 4) week 4 research
 * 5) week 5 Begin draft
 * 6) week 6 research
 * 7) week 7 edit paper

Anticipated Problems


Week 6 Project Review


Before Or During Week 6

 * The Great Commission
 * 1) Do research on religion: Buddhism, Islam, Christianity 1,000wds
 * 2) Do interviews with adherents of each faith 1,000wds
 * 3) Their own faith
 * 4) Their reflections on other faiths
 * 5) Personal Essay: Reflections 1000wds

Project
Buddhism

Buddhism was first known in India between the 6th and the 4th BCE. Buddhism was first taught by Siddhartha Gautama, who is also known as Buddha.

Right before his birth, his father King Suddhodana, was prophesied by an astrologer that his son, Siddhartha will become a holy man, depending on what he see outside of the palace ground. After hearing that, King Suddhodana prevented Siddhartha from leaving the palace ground. By the age of 29, Siddhartha decided to go out of his palace, despite of King Suddhodana’s effort of preventing him to go out of the palace. Outside of the palace, Siddhartha learned the suffering of ordinary people, that they will encounter becoming an old man, a sick man a corpse and finally becoming an ascetic holy man. This event was recorded on the Buddhism scripture as the four sights. These experiences prompted Gautama to abandon royal life and take up a spiritual quest.

He started his quest by encountering anapanasati meditation which means 'mindfulness of breathing'. The practice of ānāpānasati varies. Typically, one begins by sitting in a comfortable position, with the back and neck straight, in a comfortable and peaceful environment. If the breath is short, the mediator should simply observe that the breath is short. If the breath is long, the mediator should simply observe that the breath is long.

	While inhaling and exhaling, the mediator practices: training the mind to be sensitive to one or more of: the entire body, rapture, pleasure, the mind itself, and mental processes

	training the mind to be focused on one or more of: inconstancy, dispassion, cessation, and relinquishment

	steadying, satisfying, or releasing the mind.

The concept of Buddhism is to life a life with good deeds and having karma as the law of cause and effects. Karma, in Buddhism means the cycle of suffering and rebirth for each being. Karma, in Buddhism also specifically refers to those actions that spring from mental intent, which brings about a consequences or result.

Buddhism believes in rebirth. Rebirth refers to a process where being will go through a succession of a lifetime as one of many possible forms of life. There are six realms recorded in the sutra

1.	Naraka Beings: these beings who lives in different realms and is suffering. (hells) 2.	Animals : beings that Is living long side with human, but is considered as different realms of  life. 3.	Preta : share the same realms with humans, but is invisible to most people, also known as the hungry ghost 4.	Human Beings: the realms of rebirth in which attainting nirvana is possible. 5.	Asuras: known as demons, titans or antigods. 6.	Devas (brahmas): Gods, deities, spirits, and dragons.

The ultimate goal for most Buddhist is to achieve arahant, which means that they don’t need to go through another rebirth and go through another life, and become one of the bodhisattvas (Buddha).

Christians

Christians is the biggest religion out there in the world, and is recognized by most countries around the world. Christianity holds a very important role in the world nowadays, The event of the birth of Christ is one of the big holiday in the world known as Christmas, while Easter, the event crucifixions of Jesus Christ become Easter one of the most anticipated holidays for kids. Christians believe Jesus as their savior and he is the Son of God. Jesus was believed as the messiah and was anointed by God as savior of humanity.

Jesus was sent by God, as a human, suffered pains and temptations of mortal human, but not sinning. According to the gospel of Matthew and Luke, Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and was born from the Virgin Mary.

After his long journey preaching about the gospel, he arrived at the day he was crucified. Christians believe that he was crucified to cleanse our sins and erase it so that we are white as snow. The death of Jesus also shows Gods power over life and death.

Bible refers to the compilations of the old testaments and new testaments. Bible was written by saints, human, with the inspiration of the Holy spirits, therefore they believe that God Himself gave it. Bible is a self-sufficient revelation, the final authority on all Christian doctrine, and has all information about the truth necessary for salvation.

It was written in the bible, john 14:6,Jesus answered,” I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” From this scripture alone all Christians believe that need to be a believers in order for them to be saved during the day of judgments.

Most Christians believe that human being will receive divine judgment at the end of their life, that they will only live once and that’s it. Christians believe that the second coming of Christ will occur at the end of time. They believe that Jesus will come and cleanse those who believe and do as he commended in the bible and will live happily ever after.

Islam

Islamism is as a monotheistic Abrahamic religion originated with the teachings of Muhammad. The meaning of Islam is submission, or total surrender of oneself to God. Ones one surrendered to the Islamic teaching, they are known as Muslim, meaning as the one which submits to God.

It was recorded that there are approximately 1.8 billion people across the world who are Muslims, which making them the second largest religion in the world. Muslims believes that God revealed the Qur’an to Muhammad, God’s final prophet, after Jesus. Muslims believes that Jews and Christians distorted the text God gave to their prophets by either altering the text or using a false interpretation.

According to Islam, all Muslims need to believes in God, his revelation, his angles, his messengers, and in the “ day of Judgment”. Muslims believes that Muhammad is God’s final prophet what was chosen by god through the angel Gabriel. In Islamic tradition, prophets are men selected by God to be his messengers. Although they are chosen as God’s messenger they believe that prophet is still human and they are not divine, although some of them are able to perform miracles.

Islam’s fundamental theological concept is that that belief there is only one God, whom they call Allah. Muslims are not expected to visualize God but to worship and adore him as creator and protector.

Muslims considered Qur’an as the literal word of God. The word Qur’an means recitation. To Muslims, the Qur’an is perfect only as revealed in he original Arabic, therefore Muslims are required to be able to remember the exact word presented in the Qur’an just because it is written in the Qur’an that “ interpretations of its meaning is not as the Qur’an itself”

Believing in the Day of judgments is crucial for all Muslims. They believe that it has all been scheduled by God but is still unknown to man. God has full knowledge and control over all that occurs, and according to all Muslims, nothing will happened to them unless God permitted it. Although everything has been pre ordained by God, Man has the right to choose between the right and wrong, but they need to take consequences for their actions.

There are duties and practices that needed to be done by all Muslims. The five pillars are the fives practices essentials, which are:

1.	The shahadah, is the basic creed of Islam. “I testify that there is non worthy of worship expect God and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.” This testament is a foundation of all practices of Islam.

2.	Salah, ritual prayer, which must be performed five times a day, and each salah need to be performed facing towards the Kaaba in Mecca. It is intended to focus all of our mind to God as a personal communication towards God.

3.	Zakat, is a practice of giving based on accumulated wealth, and is obligatory to all Muslims. The Qur’an also suggested that a Muslims give even more as an act of voluntary.

4.	Sawm, is the act of fasting in the month of Ramadan. Muslims must not eat or drink from dawn to dusk during this month. They need to be mindful of their actions towards sins and their action to fast is to encourage all Muslims to express their gratitude and dependence towards him, and Atone for their sins, and think of the needy. All Muslims, from the rich to the poor, they need to go through hunger during the month of Ramadan so that they can feel how is it to be the needy that have nothing to eat during the day and eat what ever they had for dinner, after working all day long.

5.	The Hajj, which is the pilgrimage during the Islamic month to the Mecca. All Muslims who can afford it and is still able to walk are obligated to visit the Mecca at least once in their life.

All Muslims need to be very polite to others, and there are specific greetings that need to be addresses to other people, for example, “as-salamu ‘alaykum” which means peace be unto you. And also saying “bismillah”, which means “in the name of God” right before each meals. Even more all Muslims, are restricted to eat all products of pigs, blood, carrion, and prohibited to drink alcohol. All meat must come from herbivorous animal, which is slaughtered in the name of God by the Muslims. All food those are able to be eaten by Muslims, called Halal food.

Personal Responses

Before reading more of my personal responses, I just want to say that this is my own personal response, and don’t want to make some people become discriminated or insulted with what I have written as my analytical writing.

First of all, I myself is still confuse about this life. I have no idea why I life and what is the purpose of this life. Everybody seems to know what they are doing, but I am just going with the flow and just follow what my hearts desired. Is it wrong? I still have to ask myself again and again when I’m doing something. Is it wrong? Is it the best for me?

I have been wondering about why people discriminate other people or why are they being racist to other people. I am a very curious person. I have been asking questions about all of things to all people, why did they decided to or this or that. But I still have no answer to 2 topics, why are people racist/discriminating. And the other one is who is God?

A lot of things come to my mind everyday. Either it is a good thing or a stupid thing. I come from Indonesia, where there are 5 religions there, Christians, Catholics, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. I have been surrounded by all this people my entire life.

I come from a Buddhist background where my parent practices Buddhist traditions. My family has been Buddhist for generations since they came form china directly, although I have no Idea which part of china they came from.

Most of my friends are Christians; they go to church and do all the churches activity, where Muslims is 80% of the Indonesians populations. I even went to a Christian school where they are very strict about religion. They required me to go to church weekly and ask the preacher to sign the attendance list. I have been forced to read the bible since I was in the junior high school. They even have their own slot of hour for Christian study. The teacher will teach each story in the bible starting from the beginning to the very end of the bible by the end of high school and we are required to remember the stories on our exam.

80% of the population in Indonesia is Muslim. Work force in Indonesia is not that expensive. Most of the people that I know will at least have 1 butler in their house. In my case, she is a Muslim. She has been working for my parents since I was in junior high. It has been 15 years since then.

Some people around me have started to make me think why did people become so discriminating, especially about religion. I realizes that people think that there will only be one religion that is correct one and will save the human being, but everyone has choices to choose from and they have their own reason why they choose it, while some people forced their opinion on others and get angry when they did not accept it.

Although sometimes I think that way, sometimes I think the right opposite way, I make fun of my Islamic friend to eat pork meat and make them get so angry at me. I did that because I am so curious behind the real reason they cannot eat pork. It’s just another animals to be eaten. Up until now, even my Muslims friend could not tell me the answer, because they told me that they become Muslim as a obligation from their parents, because their family have been Muslims for generations.

Talking more about Muslims, in Indonesia, during the fasting month of Ramadan, I noticed that the crime rate drop down by a bit. I think that it is a good think if we have Ramadan every day that the crime rate will drop just like that. Although the crime rate do went down, most of the Muslims act out that they well behave during the dawn till dusk time, but still do sins (crime) write after dusk, where they are free to do what ever they wanted. For me, it is kind of ridiculous that they are suffering during the day, but acting like they were just released from the cage right after dusk.

But I changed my point of view about Islam after consulting with my Muslim friends; they told me that there are times when people snapped out of their minds and acted crazy. Actually It never comes to my mind that I have been discriminating them as the bad guy, but actually some people who don’t really know about their own religion have not been thinking about their action to their surrounding, and their other relatives. Its just that to me, once you admitted that you have a religion and a god to worship, you should be more educated and be more mature about their action.

I also sometimes just wondering why did Christians are forcing their will on converting people to their believes. They are forcing their believes like crazy, they are really into what they believe in. Even more sometimes, I even saw them coming to other people in the street and ask them about what they believe in and ask them questions about their life, and by the end of the day, some people changed their mind and become a Christians by the end of the day.

But later on I found out that it was written in the bible as the great commission that they need to multiply the number of Christianity before the judgments day. From hearing and reading that, I become more confuse, that way, after hearing that Jesus will cleanse the sins that we had made during our life, we can just make more sins and comeback to him for forgiveness and call it good. I heard a lot of testimonies from my Christian friends about how they changed someone who are really against Christianity just by praying over them. It is hard for me to believe to it. But it still grabbed my attention that it really happens, how miracles upon miracles do happened on sick people, and how they strangely become healed after they were prayed on.

It is very interesting that these three religion really go against alcohols, but the majority of the consumers belong at least to one of this religion.

I am still thinking about what ever I used to see is true, the only people I talked about it is my parents. I don’t expect people to believe what I said, but I used to be able to see things that are invisible to most people. I used to be really afraid about it, but when I talked to my parents about my six sense, they told me that I am gifted. They were not shocked when I told them about it, because they told me that they also have the ability to see and sense them. Those beings are called hungry ghost to most monks that I talked to.

There are huge differences about the responses that I received after I asked about this questions to the pastor (Christian), Imam (Islam), and Monk (Buddhist). Each of them responded differently. The priest told me those are evil spirits that have been haunting me and will harm me if I let them be, while the Imam told me that they are a ghost you are just there to scare me and cane really harm me, But the monk actually told me that they are hungry ghost who really need my help to be reborn as another being in their next life. I was getting really confused about their responses and have no idea what to do with my ability. Unfortunately, my ability was just gone in a blink as soon as I turned seventeen and I really have no idea what I should expect next.

But this time on, I am just going along with the flow. I visited the church on regular basis but still hearing my parent’s information about Buddhism, I know that I seems like I am having a lot of faces in front of my friend, but I think that it is the best thing for me to do since I am still looking for the best think for my future, on whom I should believe.

On the other hand I learned to respect people’s decision about their religion. Especially about what they can and cannot eat, because no matter what, somewhere within their heart they felt assaulted by my words.

Works Cited Biblegateway.com. Web. .

Boeree, C. G. "An Introduction to Buddhism." Web. .

"Buddhism -." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. .

"He Great Commission - The Great Adventure." Web. .

"Islam -." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. .

"The Religion of Islam." ReligiousTolerance.org by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. Web. .